Moving Day
by Col.Foley
Summary: Abigail Shepard, recently promoted and reassigned, moves into her new offices. But in the meantime gets interrupted by James Vega and seemingly every one else in the building.


_Earth-OANI Headquarters-Vancouver Earth_

Abby Shepard cradled a large plastic box in her hands heaving it into the open office door, and slamming it behind the desk, there she wiped her brow. _Well it seems no matter what my enhancements and my training…boxes are still ridiculously heavy_.

"You sure you didn't want me to handle that Lola?" James asked coming in behind her lifting a smaller box which he held in one hand, probably one of her many commendation cases.

"No thanks James, I got it." She smiled.

"If you say so." He shrugged moving to place it on a spot on a wall side cabinet.

Abby smirked continuing out the room to get more of her stuff in, only to be confronted by Admiral Jameson peeking her head into the room.

"Shepard, how is the move coming?" She asked.

She arched a curious eyebrow at her direct superior, "Slowly, lots to do."

"You do know that we have an army of aides that will be very willing to step up and help you get ready and complete the move from the shuttle?"

"I can hande it…I mean do you really want me to have some pimply faced youth go through my underwear?" She crossed her arms over her chest and stared Jameson down.

"If they open your bags it will be a violation of private property, of a superior officer…a court-marshable offence. We can have them drawed and quartered." Jameson teased.

"Better not risk it." Abby responded in kind.

"Though, this is keeping you from starting your duties?"

Abby rolled her eyes, "Duties, what duties, I do not _officially_ start for another week."

"No rest for the wicked Lola." James remarked.

"No I guess not." Abby shrugged, shaking her head.

She looked down at the floor wondering if the Admiral did have a purpose here, or if she was just checking in. _Probably the latter._ She decided, and frowned.

Her train of thought was interrupted by a light rapping on her wooden door.

She looked up curiously to see a man standing there, with a full face of light brown beard and similar hair. But it was the t-shirt he was wearing that caught her attention, it had the armor stripe on the left, and its chest was emblazoned with the N7 symbol. She did not even pick up on the impropriety of such a statement coming to her, a Captain, dressed similarly.

_An N7? Don't recognize him from any of the barbeques_. She grunted to herself.

"Yes?" She asked curiously.

"Nathan Burke," The man said stepping into the room, "Lieutenant Commander Nathan Burke."

"Can I help you?" She pressed.

"I'm an N7." He said by way of explanation.

"Obviously." Abby's brows knitted together as she frowned at the man.

"Reporting in, one of the few of us that are left actually from what I gather figured I would stop in since I have a new boss now."

"Ah, thank you Commander." She said.

"Admiral Jameson," He nodded politely to the woman who was now leaning against the wall, "and you are?" He said noticing James in the other corner.

"James Vega." Abby replied.

"Pleasure to meet you sir." Nathan greeted with a small nod.

"Likewise, though not sure I can recall hearing about you anywhere." James appraised the other man.

"He was in deep cover during the latter part of the war, fighting deep behind enemy lines on several planets and several of the Citadel Council core worlds. Ran several high risk ops, he has been going to N7 training and evaluation of late, as well as taking a psychological leave of absence."

Abby glanced at Nathan sizing him up even more, _I wonder what that is supposed to mean_. She shrugged finally, "Cool."

"Just doing my job ma'am." Nathan smiled wanly.

Abby nodded, "Nice to meet you Lieutenant Commander, well if there is nothing else I should get back to…"

Another knock interrupted her polite suggestion to get out of her office and let her get back to unpacking and moving. She looked up to see a rather pimply faced young Ensign staring at her.

_What is this Grand Central Station?! _She sighed dramatically.

"Ma'am, you might want to turn on ANN, the Prime Minister's speech from earlier is on and they are giving some analysis, it seems to affect us."

_Wonderful_ Abby sighed moving for the controls to her vid screen.

She flipped the screen on and in one corner of the screen was the newly elected and minted Prime Minister, Soren, staring at the screen with a wan smile in the middle of his speech. He was in a box off to the side, and in another one on his right two news anchors smiled at the screen, glowing as he gave his speech.

"….and we need to look towards the future. With the Reapers defeated and the conspiracy involving the Trygerisch Corporation brought to light we have emerge into a new future. With new obligations, but fewer threats on the horizon. With the Galaxy licking its wounds, and many of the powers rebuilding in the wake of the Reaper invasion, now is the time to focus on our own people. Too long have we been reliant on the military, and while we faced a dangerous galaxy, now we need to deal with the situation on the ground. We need to rebuild, we need to focus on our own obligations to feed, cloth, and provide insurance for our people. Unlike in the previous administrations who only focused on our military, and left the people to scrounge for itself."

He paused, "As we move into the new year let us remember that we are in this together, and we need to come together to make sure the smallest among us are not left behind. Thank you, and have a good new year."

"And that was the Prime Minister elect on the need to come together as a people."

_Nice sentiment but…_ "Is he really still nagging on Hudson? The man was only Prime Minister for a couple of months; there was nothing he could do about the situation given that he is still trying to rebuild a Government. Besides Hudson was looking at Defense cuts last time I checked."

She glanced at the Admiral who shrugged dramatically, "I don't know, Hudson was looking at small cuts in certain areas and redundant areas of the Military Bureaucracy…especially redundant since the war destroyed most of that bureaucracy and yet we are still paying for it. He was taking a scalpel and considering every cut…Soren?" She shrugged again.

"Wonderful," Captain Shepard groused.

Off out of the corner of her vision she saw Nathan shrug to himself, "I actually like the guy, and a lot of what he says sounds like it could work out."

"Like what?" Abby asked reasonably.

"I…don't know." Burke frowned in consternation.

"OK then…" Abby looked forward and caught Jameson's eye. "What is this going to do to us?"

She shrugged again, "Not sure until we get legislation specifically outlining what we are doing or directives through the Joint Chiefs. And honestly we probably won't be hit too hard given how hard our directorate was hit during the war…but the ability to get back to where we were? To properly equip and train and recruit new agents? To run the N7 program? To maintain and even build more _Normandy_ class Frigates if the need arises?" She held up her fingers in a 'zero' sign.

Abby sighed crossing her chest, "So what we have is what we got?"

"Pretty much." Jameson shrugged.

"Well so much for a nice quiet move, I start moving and then everyone comes to me with a million different issues." She sighed.

"Well I did say you have this big burly man and a lot of Alliance movers just waiting to help you." Vega piped in from the back.

"Thank you dear." She shot him a look.

James and Jameson chuckled at her appropriately enjoying her particular plight, in truth she knew why they were doing it and it was all in good fun. But she still wanted the day to just move and settle in and allow the rest to attend to itself, before James and she went house shopping.

_Isn't that crazy? We had a war only a couple of years ago that devastated Earth and we are going 'house shopping'. _

But what annoyed her most were not the details, after all the enemies of humanity and freedom weren't going to wait on her whim, it was the politician's response. After all they still had the Yagh, the Batarians could raise their head and who knew how many other things could be coming along to rip down their world?

_Of course that could be an overly pessimistic, jingoistic, central view of the combat situation around the Galaxy_ she smirked to herself ruefully.

"So what do we have?" Abby asked.

"You mean in the tool box should the need arise?"

Abby nodded curtly.

Jameson went on, "Spec Ops teams like Delta and a few others, recon teams, and two _Normandy_ class Frigates. One was destroyed in the war."

"I see."

"There are about twenty N7s left," Nathan cut in, "that is including you, me, and James here, not enough to do a lot of damage…"

"But it's something," Abby concurred.

_Only twenty of us left…sure there were never a lot of us…but there were still around 80 during the war._ She shivered at the thought.

She also shivered because she knew the recruitment and training drives for the N7s went through the roof in reaction to the Reaper invasion and to get the N7 teams well established as permanent strike ops. The qualifications for joining the N7s were even reduced slightly. She did not know to how many had joined precisely, but they had to be well over a hundred of them at their peak in the war efforts.

_And now there were only 20 left._ _And with no easy way of replacing our losses_.

"And only two _Normandy's_ you said?" She asked.

Jameson nodded, "Yep."

Her mind quickly went through the available computations that she needed to make in order to distribute the resources she had available to her.

A relatively simple tactical problem given what she was _used_ to dealing with.

"Alright for the moment we need to make sure we are prepared for any developing threat, the more this guy cuts, the more our regular military won't be able to react. So we need to rely on the Special Forces."

"So what are we going to do?" Jameson probed.

"We are going to divide the N7s into strike teams, two Normandy class frigates? Two strike teams. One will be led by James Vega, and the other one will be led by Nathan Burke, as they seem to be senior in the N7 program. This team will consist of five members made up from the N7 and N6 ranks. They will serve on a semi-permanent basis on the two Frigates able to deploy within hours into the Traverse, or the Terminus, as the need may arise."

"That still leaves a lot of N7s unassigned." Nathan pointed out.

_Thank you for pointing out the obvious_, "The rest will be on training, intelligence, signle mission ops, or they could be rotated through the teams to keep them fresh. Even though we may not have the budget to conduct any additional training we can still practice, we can still prepare. I want the operatives looking at additional candidates. So if the time comes and we need more people, we can go put them through the program, the rest is up to them."

"And the rest of the Special Forces?" Nathan continued.

"We will deal with them at a more formal briefing, but for now they can do what they normally do and maintain their current posts."

"Yes ma'am." Nathan nodded.

Abby looked around pleased that she could check that annoying fact off her agenda…_good now I can get back to_…her stomach lurched painfully. She winced.

"Who's up for some lunch?"

"I am!" James piped in needlessly.

Nathan looked around the room. "Sounds good to me."

"There is a nice Italian place around the corner, just reopened."

"Excellent." Abby smiled getting her N7 hoodie off the peg and wrapping herself up in it.

"So…who's buying?" Nathan asked as she led the procession out the door.

Probably going to shock some poor waiter in the process.

**AN: **Well we come to it, another one shot set in the Mass Effect universe (owned by Bioware/ EA). Another opportunity to have practice, and another bit of time spent learning and hopefully refining the craft of my writing. And another set up for what is probably going to be my last longer fic. But we shall see won't we?

As always, read, comment, review, all criticism and all thoughts are more then welcome.


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